Sunoko Desu
by Karen Shimizu

In the bottom drawer of the dark cherry wardrobe that stands in my mother's kitchen, nestled between sweet-smelling beeswax candles and soft cloth napkins, lies a nine-by-nine-inch square of wood, air, and dull white cotton thread. This plain bamboo mat is my mother's sushi-roller. Sixty-eight cylindrical staves of smooth bamboo lie side by side in neat rows, orderly as a plowed field. White cotton string winds around each stick in a soft chain, biding them all together at the neck, chest, waist, knee, and ankle. The thread holds the sticks together, and holds them apart; the sushi-roller is a smile of gaps and teeth.  Though tightly bound, the mat is supple, and may be laid flat or rolled, like wrapping paper. A few dry, translucent flecks of rice, left from the last time my mother made sushi, cling stubbornly to the flanks of the bamboo.  The bleached cotton thread shines against the blonde wood like white teeth in a tanned face.    

Antique crockery dwells in the higher regions of the wardrobe. I know where each stack of dishes and each cluster of glassware comes from. The thin china plates and crystal wine glasses were given to my parents when they married. My grandmother won the blue-velvet box of tarnished silverware on The Price is Right.  My mother's great-aunt made the lace tablecloths. I do not know where the sushi-roller is from. I know that it belongs to my mother, but am reluctant to inquire any further. I feel as though asking after the origin of the sushi-roller might suggest that it does not belong where I find it.

*

I spend the summer after my sophomore year of college in Vermont, working at a busy cafe off a pedestrian mall where the young people have colorful hairstyles and dark summer tans. My hair is bright purple, and by July, my skin has tanned to a light tea-color. I feel as if I fit right in. One afternoon, after I serve a man coffee, he hesitates before returning to his table. Then, without any preamble, he leans towards me and asks, "Where are you from?"    

I smile at him, but my stomach churns uneasily. I don't like that question. I've been living at school since I was sixteen years old. I know more people in Chicago and Paris—cities I've never set foot in—than in any of my "hometowns." But I hate admitting to my sense of essential rootlessness almost as much as I hate admitting that I went to boarding school, so I prefer to simplify my story, supplying idle questioners with whatever response seems least likely to invite a follow-up question.     

Hands idle on the counter, I consider my audience. Vermonters are notorious for their deep and abiding scorn for fair-weather state residents, so I smile broadly at the man and tell him "I'm from Vermont" as if I mean it. I hope he'll leave it at that. No such luck.    

"Always?" he asks. He squints at me.     

I'm not very good at lying. "Well, no." I admit. I roller-coaster gracelessly through my childhood in New Jersey, my parents' divorce, boarding school, college, and then stop, feeling I've explained myself.

He looks confused, and tilts his head to one side. "Where are your parents from?"     

I am surprised by his question, although I have been asked, many times by strangers where my parents are from. My mother is a light brunette, with the fast-freckling skin of her Irish grandmother. My father's thinning salt-and-pepper hair was once thick and black, and his skin is lightly pigmented throughout the sunless winter months.  I have my mother's fine-boned hands and my father's coloring. My body is inscribed with both of their signatures, but some people only read the clues that point to my father.    

"My mother is from California," I begin.    

He waits.    

"My father is from Japan."    

He nods as if this is the answer he is looking for. He asks me, "Have you been to Japan? Do you speak Japanese? Do you know how to make Japanese food?"
    

The conversation begins to feel like an interrogation, so I create an escape route for myself. I lie. Firmly, this time.
    

"No," I say, and turn away from him, busying myself behind the counter. He leaves with his coffee. I am annoyed. I have been to Japan, I do speak a little Japanese, and I have made a few Japanese dishes. I don't want to tell him that, though. To do so, I suspect, would be to confirm what he thinks he already knows about me. Why doesn't he ask whether I've been to California, surf, or eat bean sprouts?
    

Later, when he comes up to the counter for a refill on his coffee, he says that he is sorry if anything he said offended me. I smile indulgently and tell him not to worry about it.

When I leave Vermont to visit my father in New Jersey, my mother presses a piece of paper into my hand. It is a shopping list. It reads:

sticky white rice
dried shiitake
dried kanpyo
bonito shavings
soy-sauce
mirin
nori

In Vermont, sushi ingredients are hard to come by. They're difficult  to find in New Jersey, too, since I can't read the labels on the bottles. Though I studied Japanese for three years in high school, I know as much Japanese today as I did before I took the course:

Ohiogozaimasu (Good Morning)
Saionara (Goodbye)
Bakaiyaro! (Dumbshit!)
ii desu (it is good)
muzukashii desu (it is difficult)

Fortunately the people who work at the Asian food store are multilingual, and can help me find what I need. Shopping list nervously in hand, I shuffle through the store feeling very much out of place.

My father doesn't make sushi, so we always make it at my mother's house. My mother prepares the rice, vegetables, and seasonings. I help out by rolling the sushi, using the sushi-roller from the bottom drawer of the cherry-wood wardrobe. With both hands I push the roll along, applying downward pressure though the sushi-roller as if I am making a snowball.    

The sushi-roller distributes the pressure from my hands evenly along the roll, so that when it is finished, it is cylindrical, and not uneven or lumpy. A tight maki roll makes firm cart-wheels of sushi when it is sliced. If the roll is loose, the sushi falls apart like a frayed truck tire.

As many times as I have watched my mother make sushi, I don't know how to make it myself. I don't know how to season the gourd skins so they are sweet-salty-tangy, how to bring out the shiitake mushroom's musty flavor. I could probably make a respectable maki roll if I put my mind to it, but I'm reluctant to try. I'm worried about what failing sushi-making might mean, and I'm even more worried that I might take to it "naturally."

Like my father, I'm best with Western breakfast foods: eggs, pancakes, toast, spaghetti, sandwiches. I do not even know the real Japanese name for the sushi-roller until I run a "Google" search to find out. The Japanese name for the bamboo mat used for making sushi is sunoko, but I don't know whether I will ever call it that at home. For me, the sushi-roller is above all Japanese, and I'm not sure how well I want to know it.

March 25, 2007